


Drumroll, Please!

by courtneybgood



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Daddy Issues, F/M, Gen, Memory, Nightmares, Obsessive Behavior, One Shot, Trauma, kid!Olaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 18:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16666270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courtneybgood/pseuds/courtneybgood
Summary: Olaf awakens from a nightmare and remembers.





	Drumroll, Please!

**Author's Note:**

> do you ever think about generational trauma, memory and dissociation, and a certain mr. count olaf? enjoy!

In my room, there is a single bed, pressed against the wall. The duvet is brown, and on the floor are all my movie magazines! Gee, I got em all. I got the mail subscription. My favourite pictures are the ones with the starry-eyed little starlets, I think they’re just to die for, I think their hair looks great to tug. Just kidding. On the floor is probably lots of record cases, too, ‘cause I like listening to my records, although I better clean those up, because if I scratch them they won’t play anymore.

 

I like the songs that go thumpa-thumpa-thumpa and have all the jazz and the trumpets and the men making funny growling noises. I dance around in my socks to that crap.

 

Oh, and my closet. All my clothes there are boring, but Ma chose them, so they’re fine. The other thing is that I’m forty years old and I wake up in a cold sweat with my hand clasped to my neck, where the dart just pierced my neck! Oh no, there’s nothing there, never is - fuck! What just touched my neck? Oh, no, it’s just the ribbon tied to my wrist, frayed edges brushing my throat.

 

Yesterday at school I got in trouble for putting chewing gum in the hair of the girl in front of me. She’s a stuck-up cow who deserved it, but that’s just life. According to the others, the school nurse had to yell at her to stop sobbing so she could cut it out without nicking the girl's scalp. Would have paid a pretty penny to see that.

 

They called Ma, thank fuck, and she picked me up, not the driver. I grabbed her hand, trying to work out if she liked that if that would please her right. When we got home she shook me off but it must have worked because Dad didn’t kill me. He asked me about school and I thought it was a trick and I said nothing and tried to make my fork so fucking quiet on the plate - but he just scoffed and kicked my leg under the table, told me to listen when he spoke to me. He didn’t know about Carmichael and the sobbing and her funny new haircut. Was Carmichael her name? Who knows. Feels like everyone I met before I was twelve was just made up, some crudely drawn characters I made up while bored on a bus ride, staring out the window while B. drooled on my shoulder.

 

I’m awake now so I get up, yank the ribbon off my wrist and let it drop to the motel floor. Its charming ward and mysterious powers have been stolen by the dream. It’s just an ugly ribbon plucked from the laundry basket of an anonymous little girl, now. Not an heirloom of anybody important. Not that it ever was. Where’s my wine. Where’s my girlfriend.

 

She’s sitting four desks ahead, writing so furiously you’d think she was under a time pressure. She’s reaching into my pants pocket in front of everyone to grab some ticket stub, even though she doesn’t want anyone to know that she lets me hold her. She’s threatening me with a particularly heavy library book, she’s swallowing the pain of a broken ankle, she’s wildly reversing a taxi.

 

Esme makes an indignant noise in her sleep and yanks the sheets into her, now that I’m up. She always looks smaller, lying down. Maybe it’s ‘cause she doesn’t sleep in heels. Usually. I’ve always told her she wears so much clothing you can forget the body she’s hiding under them. Well, I told her that once and told me she was going to find a new acting coach and then she ran off into the street -

 

Ma walks down the hall and stops outside my bedroom. I stop breathing. Dad comes in with the suit jacket off and I can hear how hot his skin is. I start to cry already, so soothingly angry that the hand holding didn’t work, and the boy with the glasses collapses to the floor, clutching at his smarting cheek.

 

“You’re a monster!” The little Beatrice one shrieks, snatching the baby from my arms and falling to the floor beside him, shielding his body with her own, looking like she expects me to hit her too. The baby is wailing. The sound of babies crying is strange, way too gross and primal and new, not stifled at all. I’m used to hearing kids cry, not babies. Never really known any babies. They go up to their room. I think I put them in the one that had had Ma’s books in it, once. I put them in a room that didn’t get used. We all get very drunk, then once everyone has stumbled off, I go up to the tower. I can hear the children are still awake. Ghoulish thoughts, half dead kids.

 

When B. and I were up late we used to race each other in the carpeted hallways of one of those all boarding houses. We used to see who could climb the furthest up a doorway. When Dad leaves, the thumping in my skull is like greek furies descending on me. No. No! It’s like jazz music! Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa! I should twirl around in my socks! I have an impulse to wake Esme up and march her complaining body around the room in a vigorous waltz.

 

Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, like my jazz, like the increasing drumbeat of a swelling orchestra, getting ready for the dart to strike!

 


End file.
